“People don’t simply move their companies,” Mr. Lott said. “You had these laws go into effect in 2013; there was a lot of discussion about it. Probably took the companies six, eight, 12 months to make a decision about whether they wanted to move, and then it would take a while for them to actually do it.” . . .

Critics of gun control laws think the matter is clear: Again and again studies show that gun control policies just don’t work, says economist John Lott, who has written extensively on the subject. Take background checks, he says, “Given that these laws are costly, you’d like to believe there’s some evidence that they produce a benefit.”

Webster acknowledges the divisive split in opinions. “The vast majority of people are on one side of the fence or the other,” he says. “They’ll point to a study that is convenient to their political arguments and call it a day.” . . .

And even when the film gets its facts right, it often makes little attempt to explore both sides of an issue. While everyday gun owners and activists make numerous appearances—some flattering and some definitely not—pro-gun experts are sorely lacking. Gun-control advocates are well-represented by folks like Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Robyn Thomas of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and Mark Follman of Mother Jones. Viewers are left believing that there are no similarly well-informed researchers and journalists on the right.

John Lott—the most well-known researcher on this issue who takes a pro-gun view—mentioned on Twitter last week that he was interviewed for about four hours for Under the Gun. He suspected his comments would be shortened to a few minutes; in fact he doesn’t appear at all. . . .

An examination of the interview also finds that she was dismissive of pro-gun activist and researcher John Lott’s work finding that too much gun control makes people less safe, branding his work “discredited.” . . .

Guns.com, May 23, 2016

. . . So can Trump actually ban gun-free zones? Yes and no, says John Lott, Jr., a pro-gun economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Though there is controversy surrounding some of Lott’s findings, his work still serves as a basis for pro-gun arguments.

“Trump would need to get a bill passed by Congress,” Lott told Guns.com Monday. “I believe he said that he would do this as soon as he got into office, but it would take some time. He couldn’t do it right away and if Dems take control of the Senate there is no way he would accomplish it.” . . .

A 2015 Everytown for Gun Safety analysis of FBI data on shootings found that 71 percent of the 133 incidents between January 2009 and July 2015 took place in private residences. Only 38 of the shooting incidents occurred in public spaces and of those about 21 were in places concealed guns could be lawfully carried. Only 17, or 13 percent, of the shootings took place in public spaces considered “gun free,” the report found.

Of course, Lott’s website calls the Everytown report misleading and full of errors. Lott also takes issue with how the report “muddles” the mass shooting debate by including those incidents which occurred in public and private spaces.

“Anyone who has read the diaries or seen the statements of these mass public shooters knows how they explicitly target gun-free zones,” Lott told Guns.com. “They want to kill as many people as possible and they know that the faster a gun arrives at the scene the faster they will be stopped. Since 1950, almost 99 percent of the mass public shootings have taken place in areas where general citizens can’t have guns.”

Every town . . . has its own criticisms of the pro-gun lobby’s claims and even calls Lott out by name, saying his analysis of mass shooters’ intentions are way off.

“There is no legitimate evidence that mass shooters target so-called ‘gun-free zones’ – in fact, we’ve been tracking mass shootings since 2009 and found that only 13 percent have taken place in ‘gun-free zones,’” Ted Alcorn, research director of Everytown for Gun Safety, told Guns.com in an email. “What’s more compelling is that in 57 percent of mass shootings, the perpetrator killed a current or former intimate partner or family member.” . . .

Lott is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a known gun scholar whose seminal work is More Guns, Less Crime.

On May 6, Lott tweeted that he had been “interviewed for 4 hours” for Couric’s film and he “bet” that four hours would be reduced to a “select few minutes” of actual screen time. The reduction happened alright. But instead of using those select few minutes, Couric and director Stephanie Soechtig cut Lott’s interview altogether. . . .

WMAL, May 17, 2016 (The quotes here are taken out of context. For the quote “You might be able to regulate how people carry, but you can’t ban people from carrying completely” I was explaining the decisions by Richard Posner and Antonin Scalia.